I wrote a short piece on Las Vegas for the website ”Bookish.” Here’s the first paragraph:

Las Vegas has long featured in our national consciousness, but most people will be surprised to learn that the city has a strong literary tradition, bolstered by the excellent writing program at UNLV. Las Vegas also boasts the famous Black Mountain Institute, a literary and humanist think tank attached to UNLV which has been home to at least two Nobel Prize winners—Wole Soyinka and Derek Walcott—and which was once, I believe, funded by a casino intent on intellectualizing the city.

read the rest at ”Bookish.”